


indeed there will be time

by helloearthlings



Category: King Falls AM (Podcast)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Ep 73 Spoilers, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Photographs, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-03
Updated: 2018-04-03
Packaged: 2019-04-17 17:28:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14193996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helloearthlings/pseuds/helloearthlings
Summary: Ben finds the picture entirely by accident.Sammy’s in the middle of the three people in the photo and Ben almost doesn’t recognize him at first. It’s not even that he looks that different – sure, he looks young, but despite all of Ben’s jokes at Sammy’s expense, Sammy’s not actually some ancient man shaking his cane at the youths of America even if he sometimes acts like it.It’s his smile, Ben thinks, that has to be it. His smile in the photo is so bright and wide and toothy.Sammy looks so happy.Ben’s never seen Sammy look like that before.





	indeed there will be time

**Author's Note:**

> Today's episode made me emo as hell and also gave me a good way to connect multiple ideas/hcs I have. This is mainly a fic to cry about how much Ben loves Sammy and also how sad the Sammy/Jack/Lily relationship is. I love making myself sad. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy it! I'll probably be writing more in the fandom since there's two weeks until the next episode and I can't quite cope with that.

Ben finds the picture entirely by accident.

“You want your ten bucks so badly?” Sammy has an exasperated look on his face as he runs his eyes up and down Ben, sizing him up as if they’re about to fight over it. Still, the look is playfully sardonic so Ben remains certain that Sammy isn’t about to suplex him over paying Ben back for yesterday’s breakfast. “Here!”

Sammy chucks his wallet at Ben’s head, and Ben’s reflexes aren’t quite sharp enough to catch it in midair, and Sammy laughs at him as the wallet bounces off his ear. Ben glares at Sammy as he reaches to pick it up.

“Heading to the bathroom before the show starts, but don’t get any ideas. I’ll know if you take more than ten,” Sammy teases him, a smirk on his face as he heads out the rickety door of their studio and in the direction of their office and the bathrooms.

Ben flips him off on his way out but he doesn’t think Sammy sees it.

He picks up the wallet, grumbling quietly to himself about how Sammy wouldn’t have caught the damn thing either. He takes his ten dollars and no more, thank you very much, but it’s then he notices that in the process of Sammy chucking his wallet about, a couple of papers from inside the wallet have come loose and fallen to the ground.

The first is as innocuous as it comes, a card for Sammy’s Subaru dealer, and Ben reminds himself to tease Sammy again about his car later.

But Ben quickly forgets about that pledge when he picks up the second paper.

It’s a photograph – an old one, judging by the frayed edges, but it came loose very easily which meant it hadn’t been forgotten about in one of the folds. Apparently Sammy had taken it out recently.

There are three people in the photograph – Ben immediately recognizes the one on the left as Lily Wright and his heart rate in increases. He fucking knew that Sammy had to have some kind of issue with her beyond just journalism, there had to be something there, something that really made them get at each other’s throats – and here she was, in a photo in his wallet.

She looks so young in the photo, her now flattened brown hair a curly mess of brown mixed with pink and green streaks piled high on her head. She’s got orange lipstick on and is smiling in the most obnoxiously cheesy way that Ben knows she’s doing it sarcastically. Still, she looks happy. There isn’t the stiffness to her now that probably came with years of hard-hitting journalistic experience.

Sammy’s in the middle and Ben almost doesn’t recognize him at first. It’s not even that he looks that different – sure, he looks young, but despite all of Ben’s jokes at Sammy’s expense, Sammy’s not actually some ancient man shaking his cane at the youths of America even if he sometimes acts like it.

He’s probably at ten years younger in this photo though, and it shows. There’s youthfulness about him that Ben had previously been certain Sammy never had, that he’d been born shaking his metaphorical cane, but here he is looking like nothing terrible can ever touch him in this frozen moment.

But even factoring in his youth, Ben still can’t put his finger on why Sammy looks so different. His hair is definitely much shorter, and it almost makes Ben laugh. Today’s man bun is ridiculous, but the Sammy in this photo with his hair cropped off at his ear and short bangs is enough to make Ben snort.

It’s his smile, Ben thinks, that has to be it. His smile in the photo is so bright and wide and toothy in a way Ben has never seen on Sammy's face.

And Sammy smiles plenty now, but those smiles don’t light up his face, not like the way he’s smiling in this picture. Today’s smiles don’t reach his eyes like this.

Sammy’s eyes are only half on the camera, though. Their main attention seems to be on the third figure in the photo, a man who Ben is certain he’s never seen before.

Sandy brown hair, dark eyes, broad shoulders under an Iron Maiden t-shirt, and a smile that matches Sammy’s, his arm hanging around Sammy’s shoulder. He’s half-looking at Sammy too, Lily the only one of the three entirely focused on the camera. The two of them seem entirely caught up in a joke they’re having, a private moment that Ben somehow feels like he’s infringing upon all of these years later.

Sammy looks so happy.

Ben’s never seen Sammy look like that before.

The slamming of the bathroom door down the hall makes Ben jump guiltily, even though he couldn’t have helped seeing the picture after it fell. He quickly stuffs it back inside the wallet along with the Subaru card, and hastily places it on the consul between their chairs.

Sammy appears in the doorway a second later. “I assume you’ve stolen my life savings,” he says in that sardonic way of his as he pulls out his chair and gets his headphones on. He takes the wallet and places it in his front pocket, none the wiser at what Ben just saw.

Sammy glances up at him when Ben doesn’t reply. “You alright, buddy? Look like you’ve seen an apparition. Shit, don’t tell me you saw an apparition. I don’t feel like I can deal with apparitions tonight. Rainbow lights? Sure. Skin walkers?  Let me have at ‘em. But apparitions? I didn’t eat my Wheaties this morning, so I can’t possibly be expected to fight John Wilkes Booth tonight.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Ben scoffs at him. “John Wilkes Booth hasn’t left the library yet. That we know of.”

Sammy gives Ben an affectionate look as he starts pulls out his phone in their last couple of minutes before the show goes on the air.

Ben stares at him a second too long before making himself start fiddling with his laptop in preparation for tonight.

He definitely didn’t see an apparition, but Ben can’t help wonder if he saw a ghost.

Ben decides that he’s going to make Sammy smile like that again; that he’s going to find whoever Sammy was ten years ago when he looked like that, and pull him back to today.

He just wants his best friend to be happy – Sammy had done so much to help Ben and create happiness for him, and sometimes Ben feels like he hasn’t been able to do the same for Sammy.

He can try, though. He can make sure that the Sammy Stevens from that photograph isn’t a ghost.

* * *

 

It’s not until Sammy breaks the equipment in the studio when Ben makes the connection in his head.

If he was smarter, he would’ve made the connection the second Frickard and his nasty-ass little frog voice said _your missing boyfriend, Jack_ , but Ben was still too riled up over his proposal to Emily to think of anything but _oh shit._

Sammy’s in the midst of wreaking havoc in their studio with a crazed and terrified look in his eye the likes of which Ben has never seen before when he remembers the picture.

Remembers the third person in the photo, the one who made Sammy smile like that.

Ben realizes in that moment that it wouldn’t matter how many pancake puppies he bought Sammy, that kind of smile can’t be replicated. Not without that sandy-haired guy in the Iron Maiden t-shirt that had his arm around Sammy’s shoulder.

Not without Jack Wright.

The pieces fall into place in Ben’s head before Sammy’s done with his mini-rampage – he knew about Lily Wright’s missing brother, but hadn’t seen the man in the photo in connection with Jack Wright. He’d heard of Jack Wright before – heard of him years ago, had probably heard of him before he ever met Sammy because Jack Wright was supposed to be an excellent radio producer of the highest caliber and Ben had dreamed about having jobs like his.

He’d been a co-host, too, Ben remembered, and put the final piece together.

Sammy’s co-host. Lily’s brother.

Sammy’s boyfriend.

It’s an awful night for Sammy; the crazed look in his eye never quite goes away. It’s an awful night for Ben, too – he can’t live with Sammy leaving. He just can’t. He can’t live with Sammy giving up and losing hope.

Because his mission hasn’t changed – Ben still desperately wants to make Sammy smile like he had in that picture.

But now – now he knows how to do it.

He just needs to find Jack. He just needs to find Jack and Sammy can smile like that again.

* * *

 

Ben’s doing whatever the opposite of smiling is when Gunderson unceremoniously shoves him into the holding cell in the sheriff’s station. Tears are burning in his eyes, he’s screamed himself hoarse, his head his pounding with the terror of what’s just happened, the picture of his poor sugar glider plastered on the insides of his eyeballs.

“Come back and face me, motherfucker!” Ben howls, hearing the chink of the key locking him in this goddamned cage, and Ben feels like he’s going to be sick.

“Good night for you, too, huh?” A voice remarks dryly from somewhere in the cell.

Ben hadn’t realized he had company in the cell, and forces himself to turn around and face Lily Wright and Tim Jensen sitting on the long bench that forms the back of the cell, both looking rumpled but not roughed up, each of them blinking at him, Tim with concern and Lily with judgment, her question still unanswered.

Ben doesn’t have the energy to even ask about their escapade in the Science Institute. For the first time in his life, he’s not in the mood to know something. He doesn’t want to know anything. He doesn’t want to be anything right now.

Ben wordlessly falls onto the bench on Lily’s other side, the weight in his bones and muscles just too much to bear right now.

“I’ve had better,” Ben mumbles, not wanting to explain.

Tim reaches over Lily to pat Ben’s shoulder, nodding and seeming to understand that some things are better left unsaid.

Lily though, Lily just blinks owlishly at him and says “What did Gunderson fuck with now?”

Ben doesn’t want to answer, but Lily Wright’s badgering techniques are probably pretty good at this point, so he finds it futile to argue. “Came up to the studio tonight. Insinuated that I was in cahoots with the two of you even though he knew it wasn’t true. Went into my apartment on trumped up charges and…”

He makes himself keep talking. “… _killed_ my pet, and then showed me the pictures so I would lash out and he’d have an excuse to arrest me.”

The expression on Lily’s face doesn’t change but there’s a steely hardness in her voice when she speaks. “That _motherfucker_.”

“I’m so sorry, Ben,” Tim says, shaking his head. “That’s…despicable.”

“This town is fucked up,” Lily says with a vehement shake of her head. “Where’s Stevens?”

“Yelling at the deputies at the door of the building last I saw him,” Ben mumbles, thinking of how Sammy tried to push through the two deputies on duty to grab at Ben’s coat before Gunderson had shoved Ben through the doors leading back into the depths of the sheriff’s station.

Sammy yelled after him but Ben couldn’t answer, too busy yelling at Gunderson, and Sammy had turned to yell at whoever was on duty when he obviously couldn’t reach Ben anymore.

Ben knew Sammy would stay there all night, post his bail, make sure Ben was taken care of, because Sammy was a conundrum of the highest order. Ben had no doubt in his mind that Sammy would do anything for him – anything except stay, that is.

Tears burn behind his eyes again. This night isn’t going to get any better.

“Well, he’s good at yelling,” Lily says, and Ben’s not sure if that’s meant to be comforting toward him or disparaging toward Sammy. “You’ll be out of here sooner than we will.”

All is quiet for a few moments before Lily breaks the silence by turning sharply toward Ben but not quite meeting his eye as she says “I’ve listened the show. And – thank you. For….trying.”

Ben knows what she’s talking about immediately. Her jaw is set in an uncomfortable way; she clearly isn’t used to thanking other people for things. Or talking about her brother.

“I’ll find him,” Ben promises her, voice vehement, “no matter what. Even if Sammy leaves.”

“Always a quitter,” Lily says hotly under her breath, and something akin to anger boils in Ben’s chest.

“He was outed in front of an entire town live on the radio,” Ben snaps. “I know you’re going through some of the same shit he is, but that’s a hard thing to get over.”

“Whatever,” Lily says even more quietly, clearly still thinking she’s in the right.

Ben makes himself deflate. It isn’t as if his anger is good for anything in this goddamn cell, and besides. Lily is kind of right, in her mean and snappy way.

“I don’t know why I’m defending him,” Ben says, shaking his head. “I’m so frustrated that he can’t just – can’t just see that we love him anyway. I mean, maybe not Cynthia, but who cares about her? The people who matter love him. We want to help him and he just can’t goddamn accept that.”

Lily is quiet through Ben’s ramblings, and it feels nice to talk to someone who knows Sammy, really knows him, in a way that’s different from Ben and yet Ben can tell that Lily loved him once, too, even if it was long ago, and there’s a comfort in that.

“I would’ve done _anything_ to save Emily,” Ben continues, not being able to stop. “I can’t believe he can just – it’s like it doesn’t matter – it’s like Jack doesn’t matter to him –”

“No,” Lily interrupts, and she meets Ben’s eye for the first time, a surprising fierceness in her voice. Ben thinks she even surprises herself with it by the way her eyes widen. “Look, Stevens and I haven’t been on speaking terms in a long time, and I don’t have the highest opinion of him. I think he’s a coward and a fraud and a quitter. But Sammy _loved_ Jack. Really, really loved him. And sometimes I hated him for it, but that doesn’t make it any less true. I can and will say a lot of shit about Sammy Stevens, but I can’t deny that.”

Her voice almost quivers. Ben and Tim both look at her with surprise, but she just stares at the floor of the cell, jaw clenched.

Ben isn’t sure exactly how to react – he feels ashamed for doubting Sammy, even in that small moment, but these past few weeks have been so difficult when all he wants is for Sammy to accept the love he so clearly needs and deserves.

But it’s the look on Lily’s face – that fixed, angry, regretful, remorseful, nostalgic look, that makes Ben talk again.

“He still carries your picture with him, you know,” Ben says quietly and Lily laughs, small and bitter.

“Probably has devil horns drawn on me,” she says with a proud little smirk.

“No,” Ben says. “It’s a picture from…maybe ten years ago. Of the three of you. You and him and Jack. It looks like it came from a photo booth or something, with frayed edges. Your hair is green and pink…”

Lily sits up straighter, looking at Ben again, her eyes bright with something Ben hasn’t seen in them before. “I know that picture. Jack’s wearing Sammy’s Iron Maiden t-shirt, isn’t he?”

“Yeah,” Ben says, and that unknown detail almost makes him start crying again. “Yeah, he is.”

Lily smiles, and it’s almost real this time. “Spring break, 2008. I was just about to graduate college – they still had a year left – but I really wanted the three of us to take a trip together. Sammy just wanted to hit the breweries in Portland because he’s a deeply boring person, and Jack had a list of the most haunted places in America that he wanted to visit that I squashed _immediately._ I made them go to Disney Land.”

Ben almost laughs out loud, and Lily has this look on her face like she only just remembered that this happened in the first place, this odd combination of joy and bone-crushing sadness. “You don’t strike me as the Disney Land type.”

“I wanted to do one last childish thing before I had to enter the adult world once and for all,” Lily says, her voice almost proud. “It was a great trip. The last really good…”

She goes quiet again, the smile on her face faltering.

“I can’t imagine Sammy at Disney Land,” Ben jokes to break the silence, the image of Sammy on a rollercoaster overriding the image of Peas in his brain just for a second. “He doesn’t believe in real magic right in front of his eyes, I can only imagine how terrible he’d be at Disney Magic.”

Lily smiles, biting her lip. It’s the most vulnerable Ben’s ever seen her. He wonders if it’s the most vulnerable anyone’s ever seen her since she went to Disney Land with her brother and her best friend over a decade ago.

“You really do remind me of him,” Lily says, and she doesn’t need to say who. There isn’t bitterness or anger in her voice now, just acceptance. Just stating a fact. “I said it before as a jibe at Sammy, but – you really are like him.”

Ben thinks it’s the closest Lily Wright will ever come to paying him a compliment, so he doesn’t push his luck. Their silence now is more companionable than stifled.

* * *

 

They’ve been at the hospital for over eight hours now, and Ben hasn’t slept in probably close to eighteen. It’s all been a blur, a rush, a goddamn frenzy.

They split the world in half tonight, the tear in the fabric of reality trembling in Perdition Woods until it had been sealed shut again. There was always a chance of it opening back up and swallowing them all whole, but Ben can’t think of that. Not now.

Not with Jack Wright in a hospital bed two rooms away.

Ben numbly puts his coins in the vending machine. He declined Lily’s offer to go the cafeteria and get something to eat. She and Emily are down there now, but Ben thinks food is going to turn to sandpaper in his mouth.

Still, Sammy should eat something. Sammy hasn’t left Jack’s side yet – point-blank refuses it, in fact. He barely sees the rest of them, barely hears their conversation, his eyes always intent on Jack.

So Ben’s bringing Sammy a Snickers bar – he figures sugar will probably help Sammy stay awake longer, and even though it would be great if Sammy were to sleep, Ben knows that’s not happening anytime soon. Not unless Jack wakes up.

Jack hadn’t been unconscious when the Void split open. But crossing over had done something to his system, scrambled his insides somehow, and the ER technicians and nurses and doctors wanted him in a coma until his system managed to stabilize.

They don’t know what’s wrong with him – but how could they possibly know? This isn’t an ordinary illness. This is something vast and monstrous and unnamable.

Ben stops in the doorway of Jack’s hospital room. Sammy’s still sitting where Ben left him on the chair next to the bed, his head bent over and leaning against Jack’s knee, squeezing Jack’s hand tight enough to break.

“Brought you a Snickers,” Ben shows him the candy bar. Sammy raises his head and nods. He hasn’t spoken much since they got to the hospital. Lily, Emily, and Ben had done most of the talking, both with the doctors and amongst each other.

Ben sets the candy bar next to Sammy’s chair, figuring that he’ll eat it when he gets hungry enough. He doesn’t want to push.

Jack is almost frightening to look at with the breathing tube in his mouth, and Ben knows Sammy’s trying his best to ignore it. He has these oddly shaped bruises littering his body that must be an aftereffect of the Void, and they make Ben so nervous that they’ll prevent Jack from waking up, from being alright, from being able to be there with Sammy.

They’re not normal bruises, the nurse said – it’s unsure what they are. They’re vast splotches of darkness threatening to envelop his body.

Ben wills them to disappear with all his might. They haven’t come this far for a reunion this small. Sammy and Lily deserve more than that. _Jack_ deserves more than that.

“He’s going to be okay,” Ben says for what feels like the hundredth time even if he isn’t quite sure what to believe. But he feels it in his bones that if it isn’t, then Ben will find a way to cure Jack of whatever this is, that this mission will just go on and on and on until Jack is finally freed of the Void entirely and Sammy can be whole again. “It might be a few days before we have answers and the doctors feel like it’s safe to pull him out of the coma, but it _will_ happen. I promise.”

Sammy must be tired, because he doesn’t even argue with Ben, just nods silently.

“He saw me,” Sammy says after a few moments of quiet. “In the woods. He saw me. We got to talk, just for a second. Just to say hello. He knew I was there. He knew I came for him. He knew –”

Sammy’s voice cracks.

It’s hard to remember sometimes that for all of Ben’s jokes, Sammy isn’t actually that much older than he is. And right now, he’s never seen Sammy look so young and so afraid.

Without thinking, Ben steps forward and pulls Sammy’s head towards him, squeezing his shoulders tightly.

Ben can feel Sammy shake just slightly, can tell he’s crying, but he doesn’t acknowledge it. He just holds onto him tighter.

“I understand if he has to – if he has to go. He knew. He knew I came for him, he knew I found him, I got to see him again,” Sammy’s never felt so real or so breakable, and all Ben can do is squeeze. “But I don’t want him to.”

“He knows,” Ben says shakily, and he starts tearing up himself. “That’ll help him push through, knowing that you’re here.”

Sammy doesn’t reply. It’s clearly not a good enough answer for him, but that’s because Sammy’s never understood how he inspires people to go to the ends of the earth for him.

“Hey,” Ben says, trying something else, “I thought…I thought when I first found Emily…she wasn’t breathing. I was so scared. But then she started again. And she’s still here. It was only a few seconds but – but the scare is just longer for you. Just like the grief, the waiting, the search – everything’s always taken a little longer for you. Slowpoke.”

Sammy doesn’t laugh, but he does a weird head-butt against Ben’s chest which is close enough for him.

“It’s all going to be okay,” Ben says again before he lets Sammy go. Sammy smiles up at him, still terrified but with affection.

“You could probably sit in bed with him, you know,” Ben suggests. “Maybe he could feel it.”

He can see the fear in Sammy’s eyes, and knows if Sammy’s going to do that, then he can’t have an audience for it, so Ben begins to step away.

“I’m going to go find Emily,” Ben murmurs, and Sammy smiles at him gratefully.

Ben bumps into Lily almost the second he leaves the room. There are dark circles under her eyes and her hair is a frizzy mess, but there’s a kind of buoyancy to her at having her brother in the same dimension as her that she’s had all day.

“Anything?” She asks him, nervous energy threatening to boil over. Ben shakes his head, but her tensions still doesn’t release. “Well, I guess I’ll go see for myself.”

“Sammy’s in there –” Ben starts, and Lily arches an eyebrow at him.

“So? Sammy’s gonna be in there ‘til he wakes up or the apocalypse, whichever comes first. Won’t stop me from seeing my brother.”

She steamrolls past him, which Ben has almost gotten used to from the months he’s spent with her waiting for this exact moment of getting Jack back, here and hopefully whole.

Ben turns around to peer through the window of Jack’s hospital room. Sammy took Ben’s advice, and he’s leaning up against the same pillows as Jack, his head on Jack’s shoulder. Lily’s sitting in Sammy’s vacated chair, her hand clenched around her brother’s.

Ben almost takes a picture.


End file.
